Records blunder at trust

9th July 2012

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust has had to get in touch with GPs about more than one thousand patients after a mistake with the dates on patients' records.

The trust, which is responsible for Hammersmith Hospital, Charing Cross Hospital, St Mary's Hospital, the Western Eye Hospital and Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital, had opened but not closed files on some patients and had duplicated other files.

The trust contacted doctors concerning 1,023 patients to check that their records were accurate and discovered that 74 cancer patients were dead.

A review is being carried out to check if the problems had impacted on the patients. So far, 49 patients have been ruled out but 25 are still under consideration.

The trust has also invited fifteen more patients who could possibly have cancer back to have more tests.

To date none of these patients have been diagnosed with cancer but some tests are still being carried out.

A spokesperson for Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust said: "Our patients’ safety has been our absolute priority while we have addressed issues in the way we record our data."

"We have carried out a thorough clinical review of records of patients that were referred to us for suspected cancer where we had not recorded that the patients had been seen and, where appropriate, treated."

"We are extremely sorry that this situation was not identified and resolved earlier however, we would like to reassure our patients that this was an issue of poor record keeping not clinical care."